According to Aaron, he’s been planning the story about Thor becoming unworthy of Mjolnir for some time. When looking for Thor’s replacement, the idea of a woman taking up Thor’s mantle seemed like a natural step.

“It’s not like we sat around and threw a dart on the wall to change the gender of a character,” said Aaron. “This was my idea. This wasn’t Marvel coming to me. This isn’t me throwing away what I’ve been doing.”

Instead, this is a natural progression in the Thor narrative. Jason Aaron has been writing Thor since 2012, and has great plans for the future of our mysterious girl Thor. For those of us (myself included) that are worried that the hammer will simply pass back to it’s original owner after a time, Aaron has other plans. He’s been working with other writers and artists to plan female Thor’s future at Marvel, mentioning that he’d “…love to do a Thor, Spiderwoman series.”

If that wasn’t enough evidence that he understands what fans might want of a female Thor, Aaron is completely comfortable using the word “feminist”.

“I’m not one of those people that think feminist is a bad word. I don’t see why everyone shouldn’t be a feminist.”

My sentiments exactly.

The interview still doesn’t answer pressing questions like which female character is going to take up the mythic hammer (I would reeaally like to be able to stop referring to her as “female Thor”) or what kind of challenges the new heroine might deal with.